This sign stands just up the block from The Local Store and Volume One building, at the corner of N. Dewey Street and Wisconsin Street.

About six months before I graduated from Memorial High School, I realized I wanted to go to college. To make a long, personal story short, I had finally found something I cared enough about to take a real shot at: writing.

During my first semester of college as an English student, I attended a club fair and ended up at the student newspaper's weekly meeting. I decided to take a whack at writing for their next issue and was assigned a story about a new gaming shop in town. I figured it wouldn't be too far removed from the kind of writing I had done in high school: short stories, creative writing, essay writing, etc. Then I got my first round of edits back. It was a total slash-and-burn, an axe to what I had anxiously spent hours working on; hundreds of words reduced to half a page.

Journalism did not care about my intricate structure and creative use of adjectives, the salt-on-the-rim or cherry-topper details. Journalism wanted the story, straight up. 

I grew to love that no-B.S. way of writing. A story could still have intrigue without grandiose, flourishing descriptors. The truth is more interesting than all that, anyway. 

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PEOPLE DESERVE TO BE SEEN AND HEARD, AND I WANTED TO HELP MAKE THAT HAPPEN.

MCKENNA SCHERER

managing editor

After I graduated with a journalism degree, I landed a gig at Volume One – and quickly realized there was more than enough room for a happy medium between purely creative writing and hard journalism. News writing could be elevated by detailed observations, and a true story with a tongue-in-cheek sentence or even, insert dramatic gasp, my opinion (when it made sense to include) could bring a piece to life. Volume One reminded me why I had decided to go to college and become a first-generation graduate at all: people deserve to be seen and heard, and I wanted to help make that happen.

There is a sign that stands just up the block from The Local Store and Volume One building, at the corner of N. Dewey Street and Wisconsin Street, and it reads: "The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the interest of the community." 

That quote lives at the heart of Volume One, and if you've been reading the magazine for a while, you probably recognize it. I think about it a lot. I chase that feeling in my chest: a blossoming when I finish writing a story; when a quote leaps off the page and smacks you upside the head; when I connect with a stranger over their latest project or wildest dreams. I act on impulse to connect and create, to share someone's truth – or my own. The results are often found in the pages of Volume One.